This book deals with the exercise of power through display and the intentional manipulation by Fascist Italy of cultural forms and practices in order to project a dominant visual culture. Providing specific examples and noting the complexity of the process, the authors deal with evidence and wrestle with the complexity of actual events, people, and contingencies.

This highly stimulating, coherent, and original volume of essays illuminates superbly the many and complex ways in which the Fascist regime appropriated different aspects of the past, from ancient Rome to the Risorgimento, in its attempts to manufacture and promote an integrated and intrinsically modern national identity for Italy.

A refreshing view of Fascist Italy from the perspective of scholars of antiquity and the Renaissance, Donatello among the Blackshirts illuminates long-neglected components of Fascist culture and reminds us of the lasting effects of Fascist-era interventions in and manipulations of Italy's rich cultural patrimony.

The interdisciplinary essays of Donatello among the Blackshirts provide readers with a rich, informative, and highly accessible overview of the manipulation of history, culture, and the arts in Fascist Italy.